In recent years, techniques have been studied in which an integrated circuit (IC) capable of re-configuration of circuits, for example, an FPGA, is utilized for computing of an information-processing apparatus such as a server. Here, FPGA stands for Field-Programmable Gate Array.
An information-processing apparatus equipped with an FPGA may configure any logical circuit in the FPGA and cause the logical circuit to operate.
As an example of usage of an FPGA in an information-processing apparatus, there is a case where a logical circuit configured to access a memory is configured in the FPGA, and the FPGA functions as a processor of the information-processing apparatus. In other words, there is a case where an FPGA is treated equivalently to a processor such as a central processing unit (CPU).
As examples of the related art, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publications Nos. 2006-127349 and 2011-248503 are known.
With the spread of cloud services, a server configured to provide a cloud service (hereinafter, also referred to “cloud server” or “host machine”) may possibly be equipped with an FPGA as mentioned above.
The cloud server may possibly be operated such that a desired computation circuit is configured in its FPGA by, for example, the user of a terminal (hereinafter, also referred to “client machine”) and the result of computation by the computation circuit is returned in response to access from the client machine.
However, for a cloud system, it is sometimes difficult to examine security risk individually for each of computation circuits generated in an FPGA by users.